Art Basel Unlimited

Booth U62

Painted with Yayoi Kusama’s characteristic dots in vertical stripes, this monumental sculpture is part of a series of bronze pumpkin works first shown in the artist’s 2023 exhibition I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers at David Zwirner, New York. While pumpkin shapes have appeared in Kusama’s work since her early art studies in Japan in the 1950s, this organic form became central to her oeuvre from the 1980s onward. Here, its normally spherical shape is transfigured into an undulating surface, as if topologically morphed or stretched. The work’s installation prompts viewers to explore the work from various perspectives, each shift in viewpoint unveiling a dynamic interplay of space and form.

Booth U35

Animating the four corners of a room with a vertical configuration of cool white and warm white light, untitled (to Tina and Christoph and their Palladio) is among Dan Flavin’s first works to employ circular fixtures. Executed early in his career, it is a prime example of his ability to conceptualize, activate, and transform space with light and color – strategies that would become highly influential to his peers as well as subsequent generations of artists. It also represents an important early use of a serial procedure to structure the logic of the work; the height of each column of fixtures is dictated by the height of the room, as well as that of the other columns. The work is dedicated to Katharina (Tina) and Christoph Sattler, who were friends with Flavin and were interested in the Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio.

Booth U43

Quetta is an installation of 31 photographs documenting Sigmar Polke’s travels to Quetta, Pakistan, in 1974, where the artist captured scenes in the opium dens he visited. By embracing imperfections inherent to the photographic medium – leaving visible fingerprints, scratches, and abrasions – Polke created a group of images that are formally linked to their subject matter through visual qualities of diffusion and happenstance. Of the photographic series that the artist produced from his travels during the 1970s, this grouping stands out as one of the largest. These images demonstrate Polke’s interest in hallucinatory imagery and unorthodox modes of expression, with formal qualities that embody the experimentation and freedom of the artist’s practice.